How we got here. Some inside scoops from Microsoft on handling early days of pandemic to cutting over 20K folks in 2023

https://www.teamblind.com/post/How-we-got-here-Some-inside-scoops-from-Microsoft-on-handling-early-days-of-pandemic-to-cutting-over-20K-folks-in-2023-7ndQwLAU

2. Hiring boom of 2021 and early 2022.

Sales of our products and services skyrocketed during the pandemic just like it did for the industry as a whole.

Org leaders and finance departments were making rosy projections for growth. It quickly turned into a monkey see monkey do business in entire software industry. Everyone was making rosy projections for growth. Insane numbers like 30%-40% growth for certain businesses and orgs for years to come.

This was a critical moment. There were some leaders who had the foresight to see these growth numbers are not sustainable. There was also a slow but steadily growing belief that the demand was only brought forward and will quickly revert on the other end of the curve. Sadly the voices expressing skepticism were few and drowned out in the loud noise of empire building org leaders and SLT members drooling over the implications for their stock awards.

Everyone in the industry (except apple) was doing it so nobody wanted to go against the wisdom of the collective. Raising debt to finance things was really cheap (especially for Microsoft given our bond rating) so everyone in the industry began hiring and collecting employees like Pokémon cards.

SLT and the board did discuss the possibility of these forecasts not coming true. The overwhelming consensus was that there is a lot to be lost if it did come true and we were not prepared and resourced well to capture the opportunity. They thought the demand will last much longer and the tapering will be gradual. Similar discussions were taking place in corporate board rooms across large tech.

The scene was set. The dream castles of rosy projections for revenues were built on faulty assumptions. The dissenting voices were lost in the collective chorus of greedy leaders dreaming about lofty future stock valuations.

I Don’t Need to Be a ‘Good Person.’ Neither Do You.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/25/opinion/desires-good-person.html

I’m increasingly seeing this in my work as a therapist in New York City. So are my colleagues. One said to me recently that he was tired of listening to his patients talk about the impossible advice inhaled on Instagram and TikTok — to say nothing of the self-help industry. “Doesn’t anyone come asking to be more free?” he exclaimed. “They don’t,” I said pessimistically. “Everyone wants to make the right decisions.” The problem is it’s very hard to tell someone that pursuing the abstract question of “right and wrong” ways to live will lead you into a cul-de-sac. It avoids the deeper question of desire, and desire is a compass.

The promised image of goodness skirts pleasures that — for obscure reasons — you aren’t sure you can want. I see patients grow fearful when they can’t tell if what they desire is compulsive — just another rote, maybe addictive, behavior, or a real attempt to test the boundaries they live under. How do you locate free will in a world this compulsory? Unsettling desires challenge our perception of who we are and what life might look like. This boundary, the testing of it, takes time and care. Importantly, you come to see that limits cannot be held or crossed under compulsion. They must be approached freely. 

To Be Happy, Marriage Matters More Than Career

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/17/opinion/marriage-happiness-career.html

As Wilcox writes in his vitally important forthcoming book, “Get Married”: “Marital quality is, far and away, the top predictor I have run across of life satisfaction in America. Specifically, the odds that men and women say they are ‘very happy’ with their lives are a staggering 545 percent higher for those who are very happily married, compared with peers who are not married or who are less than very happy in their marriages.”

“When it comes to predicting overall happiness, a good marriage is far more important than how much education you get, how much money you make, how often you have sex, and, yes, even how satisfied you are with your work.”

The economists Shawn Grover and John F. Helliwell studied two groups of adults over time, some who married and some who didn’t. They found that marriage caused higher levels of life satisfaction, especially in middle age, when adults’ average level of satisfaction tends to be at its lowest. It wasn’t only the traits people brought into the marriage; marriage itself had positive effects.

CLASSICAL MUSIC IS FOR EVERYONE

https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2023/08/classical-music-is-for-everyone

I host the mid-morning program “Classical Café.” I always enjoy the mix of works we have scheduled, but I especially enjoy Fridays, when the playlist is comprised of pieces that listeners have asked to hear. Their choices tell me a lot about why people love classical music.

Music can put a smile on your face and leave you humming a melody. Once one of the requested works was Bach’s Italian Concerto. After I played it, a listener called in to say, “If that doesn’t make you happy, I don’t know what would.” Yes, and I’d say the same about Felix Mendelssohn’s Octet.

Conversely, some works speak to feelings of loss and grief. Great music can heighten those emotions. Two pieces that listeners sometimes choose to dedicate to loved ones are Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings and Max Bruch’s Kol Nidrei. 

'Not of faculty quality': How Penn mistreated Nobel Prize-winning researcher Katalin Karikó

https://www.thedp.com/article/2023/10/penn-katalin-kariko-university-relationship-mistreatment

Scales also said that Penn's approach of giving minimal funds to Karikó followed a similar model to most peer institutions. He said many research institutions provide some degree of startup funds, and the expectation is for researchers to acquire external grants otherwise.

All of those interviewed commended Karikó for winning the Nobel Prize alongside Weissman.

“I think it’s a testament to her fortitude,” Sobol said. “Now that you look back on the calendar, you see that she was 20 years ahead of where everyone is now.”

Scales said he hopes that Karikó's win will prompt changes to funding allocations in research.

“I do hope that it causes Penn and a bunch of other institutions that fund science this way to reflect a little bit on what the chances are that some scientists who do not get funding, and wind up leaving, end up being like Katalin Karikó,” Scales said.  

The Decolonization Narrative Is Dangerous and False

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/10/decolonization-narrative-dangerous-and-false/675799/

Since its founding in 1987, Hamas has used the murder of civilians to spoil any chance of a two-state solution. In 1993, its suicide bombings of Israeli civilians were designed to destroy the two-state Olso Accords that recognized Israel and Palestine. This month, the Hamas terrorists unleashed their slaughter in part to undermine a peace with Saudi Arabia that would have improved Palestinian politics and standard of life, and reinvigorated Hamas’s sclerotic rival, the Palestinian Authority. In part, they served Iran to prevent the empowering of Saudi Arabia, and their atrocities were of course a spectacular trap to provoke Israeli overreaction. They are most probably getting their wish, but to do this they are cynically exploiting innocent Palestinian people as a sacrifice to political means, a second crime against civilians. 

I Fought for the I.D.F. in Gaza. It Made Me Fight for Peace.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/28/opinion/international-world/gaza-idf-israel-veterans.html

All our casualties and the suffering brought on Palestinians in Gaza accomplished nothing since our leaders refused to work on creating a political reality in which more violence would not be inevitable. While I believe in self-defense, fighting in Gaza taught me that if my government doesn’t change its approach from crushing Palestinian hope to committing to Palestinian independence, not only will this war kill an untold number of Israelis and Palestinians in addition to the thousands who already have died, but it also will not decisively end terror. A ground invasion is doomed to failure.

The attacks on Israel, and the response.

https://www.readtangle.com/israel-attacks-hamas-palestine-war/

And yet, many Americans only view modern Israel as the "powerful" one in this dynamic. Which is true — they obviously are. It isn't a fair fight and it hasn't been for decades because Israel's government is rich and resourceful, has the backing of the United States and most of Europe, and has an incredibly powerful military. At the same time, Israeli leadership has made technological and military advancements that have further tipped those scales — all while the Israeli government has helped create a resource-thin open air prison of two million Arabs in Gaza. 

Conversely, Palestinians are devoid of any real unified leadership, and the Arab world is now divided on the issue of Palestine. Israel is unwilling to give the people in Gaza and the West Bank more than an inch of freedom to live. These are largely the refugees and descendents of the refugees of the 1948 and 1967 wars that Israel won. And you can't keep two million people in the condition that those in the Gaza strip live in and not expect events like this. 

Texas state representative James Talarico explains his take on a bill that would force schools to display the Ten Commandments in every classroom

https://v.redd.it/tj9xa36qektb1

Doesn't just discuss separation of church and state, also talks about being a Christian and praying in secret.

Ways of Knowing: Lessons on Agroecological Transitions from a Pothwari Farm

https://blog.castac.org/2023/07/ways-of-knowing-lessons-on-agroecological-transitions-from-a-pothwari-farm/

As a researcher and self-identifying ‘citizen planner,’ I was curious if new methods of agriculture could make the sector remunerative enough to counter the desire to convert agricultural land into real estate. Since I was familiar with the emerging significance of agroecology and regenerative agriculture  in climate adaptation, I was motivated to understand what it would take to help us transition towards practices closer to agroecology.

Thread on homeschooling

https://twitter.com/sugar_boogers/status/1711903253615505669

The Dark Side of Courtship

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/09/the-dark-side-of-courtship.html

In complementarianism, women have limited spiritual authority. Once Shannon married and became first the youth pastor’s wife and then the senior pastor’s wife, what little power she did have was over other women. “I was given a small group of women to lead in my new role,” she wrote. The first task she was given was to tell a new pastor’s wife that her new position meant she could not pursue her dream career in veterinary medicine. The idea made her sick. “But I did it,” she wrote. “This time I was the cruel one, forcing obedience and conformity on a person I was supposed to love and care for.”

I asked if she perceived a tendency to pit women against one another in the church. “I do think conservative Evangelicalism falls under this model,” she said, “because it’s a hierarchical community,” one in which she had to show people what they were supposed to be like. “I do think women are used,” she continued. “They’re a part of the reason why we got stuck in it. Because women themselves are being mistreated, but they don’t see it and then they pass it on because we believe it’s noble and we believe it’s good. And so we’re literally selling it to our own kind, and it’s hurting us all and we don’t see it.”

It’s complicated, she added: “When you are limited in your power and then you are given a place where you can be powerful, I think different kinds of people are going to respond differently. They might not see that they don’t have power in other ways. I certainly didn’t totally understand the full scope of my situation.”